WHITE HOUSE MEMO; Reid's Words On Race Carry Hints Of Obama's

By JEFF ZELENY

Published: January 12, 2010

Long before Senator Harry Reid offered a view about what it takes to be a successful black political figure in America, Barack Obama did, too.

It was no surprise that Mr. Obama promptly accepted Mr. Reid's apology over the weekend for a racially insensitive remark, considering that health care and the rest of the president's legislative priorities are likely to rise or fall on the back of Mr. Reid, the Senate Democratic leader.

But that is not the only reason Mr. Obama came to Mr. Reid's defense and is heading to Nevada next month to campaign for him.

Mr. Reid's comment -- that Mr. Obama was ''light-skinned'' and did not speak with a ''Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one'' -- touches on issues the president raised himself while navigating the complicated path of race and politics during his rapid rise to the White House.

It was only two years ago, after all, that Mr. Obama was struggling to convince some African-American voters that he was ''black enough,'' as some of his critics put it at the time. And his electoral prospects did not improve in the South Carolina primary, where the support of black voters is critical, until he won the Iowa caucuses, where most voters are white.

As Mr. Obama traveled across the country in the long Democratic primary fight, his policy proposals sounded largely the same from state to state. That was not always the case for his inflection and mannerisms.

When he addressed some black audiences, Mr. Obama's consonants tended to linger a bit. He would speak with a certain staccato and rhythm -- particularly in churches -- that he did not use when speaking to white audiences in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Plenty of other black and Hispanic politicians have followed a similar pattern. So, too, have many white politicians -- Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, for starters -- when a Southern accent suddenly becomes more pronounced in a campaign speech below the Mason-Dixon line.

For Mr. Obama, the pattern began well before he started running for president. As a freshman senator in 2005, after delivering an acceptance speech in Detroit for a lifetime achievement award from the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Obama spoke about the differences.

''I know if I'm in an all-black audience that there's going to be a certain rhythm coming back at me from the audience; they're not just going to be sitting there,'' Mr. Obama told The Chicago Tribune. ''That creates a different rhythm in your speaking.''

Throughout his presidential campaign, and in his first year in office, many observers suggested that Mr. Obama was uncomfortable talking about race. A more nuanced view, however, is that Mr. Obama -- the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya -- does not want race to define or distract him.

But Mr. Obama has acknowledged that his mixed race helped accelerate his political rise in several ways. He believes he would not likely have been asked to deliver the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention if he had been white. And he almost certainly would not have signed a multimillion-dollar book deal about his family background, which created the celebrity that laid the foundation for his presidential bid.

Still, when Mr. Obama announced his candidacy three years ago, he bristled at the notion that he was trying to become the United States' first black president. He said he was merely running for president like the rest of the candidates, and if he won, he would be the nation's first black president. That, he said, was a significant distinction.

The comments continued to engulf Mr. Reid on Monday as he traveled in Nevada, where he apologized anew and conceded, ''I could have used a better choice of words.'' He said that the remarks were expressed in the context of lending support to Mr. Obama, who he believed would make a strong presidential candidate.

Long before he ran for president, Mr. Obama spoke openly about the expectations for black politicians. He did not, of course, use the term ''Negro dialect,'' as Mr. Reid did, but his comments seem appropriate to the current discussion of race and politics.

''We have a certain script in our politics, and one of the scripts for black politicians is that for them to be authentically black they have to somehow offend white people,'' Mr. Obama said in a 2005 interview with The Tribune.

''And then if he puts a multiracial coalition together, he must somehow be compromising the efforts of the African-American community.''

''To use a street term,'' Mr. Obama added, ''we flipped the script.''

PHOTO: President Obama spoke of ''a different rhythm'' in speeches.(PHOTOGRAPH BY LUKE SHARRETT/THE NEW YORK TIMES)